Working (or not) on a minus budget, and the imminent book of 'Organic Acoustic Modular Synthesisers'

Readers of this blog (if any) will be familiar with its theme of sound-making on a zero budget.  Electronic synthesisers are expensive... Conveniently, physical objects that can mechanically simulate synthesiser processes are not expensive - they're freely discoverable in urban/suburban environments.  Coming to terms with poverty guides all post-electronic music initiative, so it seems gratuitous when a post-electronic aesthetic is adopted by a well-off 'entrepreneur' (urgh), or basically anybody with employment.  Of course, I'm jealous, as I've been angling to earn a living or obtain funding from this idea - which I ascertained to be substantially original - since the dawn of the 21st century, yet others with non-zero budgets are surely better suited to doing stuff with swish electronic gubbins rather than adopting post-electronic contortions?  It seems unnecessary.  I always preface every post-electronic workshop with a warning that post-electronic systems go hand-in-hand with impoverishment, but it's surprising (and teeth-gritting) when some participants go on to later disprove this without me.

Back when I had a working camera and means to upload video, I used to get nice comments on my YouTube channel such as "This is great, may have to try something similar myself!" (that one was from 14 years ago).  More recently, the Oscillatorial Binnage post-electronic 'WokTones' performance video from last year attracted the comment "Amazing and inspiring work! I might pick up a technique or two for my own performances from this clip".  This sort of thing is quite encouraging, but it's rather galling if your meagre income is derived from this stuff; if people keep copying it (albeit divorcing it from the theory and melodrama that spawned it) it diminishes the chances of getting gigs.  This is all part of what I glibly call the Ghazala/Collins paradox: Reed Ghazala, a completely independent figure, pioneered circuit-bending's intuitive rewiring of electronics to produce strange new instruments, whereas Nicolas Collins is academically-rooted, with a methodical approach to hardware hacking, and whose instructional book 'Handmade Electronic Music', published by Routledge explodes the mystique surrounding circuit bending, rigorously surveys the collectives and artists working in this field (including Oscillatorial Binnage!), and heralded Collins' hardware hacking workshops around the world.  Both fascinating and well-established artists.  Apologies to both for this gross oversimplification of their work, but, theoretically, these could be viewed as two distinct approaches that cannot comfortably co-exist - Ghazala almost being a Davenport brother to Collins' J. N. Maskelyne (to use a Victorian magic analogy).  (Discuss[?]).

I never fully appreciated, until now, the possibility of a 'minus budget': a budget of debt.  In the last year or so it's become apparent that there comes a point of resourcelessness where productivity itself is scuppered.  I wrote an article for The Invisible Worker during the first lockdown last year when everyone seemingly went digital: "I was semi-prepared for a post-electronic situation, but completely unprepared for an ultra-electronic one".  The dreaded 'minus budget' eats far beyond a project's boundaries, ultimately jeopardising your living accommodation.  Minus budgets force the discarding of instruments and tools for want of space.

Recently I was forced to jettison many of my more cumbersome creations - over a decade's worth of electromagnetic or hand-cranked acoustic soundmakers once regularly trotted out for gigs or lectures.  With an inkling of their potential awkwardness, in 2005 I'd called these instruments "albatross machines" due to them being so difficult to transport.  Most of these hadn't even been documented properly due to my lack of up-to-date technology, and I relied on people filming my instruments on their phones during live demonstrations, naively assuming that that media would have some permanence (there's an important lesson there).  This reminded me of a poignant project by Imogen Heap and Leafcutter John...

In 2014 musicians Heap and Leafcutter launched a homemade instrument amnesty, requesting submissions of homemade "Musical Creatures" - semi-autonomous soundmaking constructions on the cusp of controllability - whose owners couldn't care for them any more: experiments "gathering dust, sitting on that shelf".  They cited my post-electronic instrument-building work "just to give you an idea of the kind of thing we're after", and provided a link to my blog.  Their project collected all kinds of these "creatures" to perform together.  If only the amnesty was ongoing, my creations would still be alive, AHGHHrg384uvgerjioel!!1

At the time, I wondered about the backstories of the devices that their project sought to rescue.  I couldn't imagine letting my own instruments fall into neglect.  Even my failed apparatuses were kept and tinkered with regularly.  Of course, I didn't reckon with the prospect of a minus budget.

My early stabs at post-electronics saw infusions of air and liquid, or rather syrup, footpumped into vortices between perforated membranes with adjustable tautness.  Wishing for less messy systems, I soon began crowbarring electromagnetism into post-electronic practice.  One abandoned instrument in this direction was too power-hungry to be classed as post-electronic: the electromagnetically levitated xylophone, inspired by the techniques of Eric Laithwaite, whose visionary book 'Propulsion without Wheels' I'd come across many years ago.  Ambitiously, xylophone keys would hover in the air, with theoretically near-infinite sustain.  The space-age ideal was, in practice, a shambolic hotchpotch, as the magnetic levitation field muffled the tones of the keys even when nodally aligned, and the buzz of the greedy coil drivers overwhelmed the xylophone tones.  Any refinements were beyond my budget, and besides, I sensed the instrument would be too gimmicky to offer anything exploratory.  But this led to lamppost resonation and, finally, a passively 'electric' post-electronic solution to completing a real-world analogy of the Attack-Decay-Sustain-Release envelope, so crucial to electronic music.

Anticipating the loss of these 'albatross' instruments in 2020, I decided to attempt a documentation of post-electronics' evolution, and a large body of text was rapidly accumulated which has been deemed publishable.  If all goes to plan, this will shortly be purchasable in book form.  The book 'Post-Electronics: The History, Design & Philosophy of Organic Acoustic Modular Synthesisers' memorialises many of the now-discarded instruments, or rather, modules, since the interconnectability of acoustic constructions is a key point.  But the main function of the book is to serve as a detailed guide to electronic-simulating acoustic soundmaking operations.  It also draws parallels with pre-electronics, giving an airing to the dynamics that condemned to obscurity the 19th century electro-musical innovator J. B. Schalkenbach (whose work I've surveyed, being custodian of the Johann Baptist Schalkenbach archive, yet bizarrely no publisher wants to touch), as well as countless old inventions that, undeveloped during their day, now become plausible as post-electronic music mechanisms in the wake of a widened musical consciousness that can reasonably accommodate them.

Ivory Tower Misdoings, or "Something for Nothing"

The current acoustics-themed Leonardo Music Journal (#22) features my paper 'Miraculous Agitations: On the Uses of Chaotic, Non-Linear and Emergent Behaviour in Acoustic Vibrating Physical Systems'.  It gives an overview of the philosophy of miraculous agitations (or thaumatacoustics: acoustics compounded with the prefix 'thaumata', meaning 'wonder') and methods of electromagnetically resonating object-assemblies.  In the LMJ paper, I avoided describing how poverty shaped the philosophies behind miraculous agitation apparatuses.  I'll descant upon this aspect here.

An older composer - either misunderstanding my words or trying to 'get a rise' from me - once described the miraculous agitation technique as the "musical equivalent of benefit fraud"(!).   He believed that it was sheer laziness to sit and make arbitrary mechanical adjustments to piles of vibrating junk in the hope that a composition would compose itself.  I suppose he thought it was something like getting a "finished composition" for free.  Whilst his unusual angle was very thought-provoking, I'd have to summon to memory a quote that would be appreciated by someone of his generation: "I think you're entering the realms of fantasy here, Jones."

Music is traditionally composed - or 'worked out' - in 'horizontal' time (as most music sequencers scroll).  Thaumatacoustic apparatuses on the other hand are scrounged together, assembled and 'worked out' beforehand in an instance removed from time.  So the 'work' goes into the arrangement of global conditions outside time.  The composing here is principally a process of searching for objects, assembling objects and arranging an initial state in 'vertical' time, before the electromagnetic agitators are even switched on.  It's more about 'compositing' than 'composing'.  The actual tonestuff emerges over time, almost of its own accord, from largely unforeseen interactions within the assembly.
 
For an apparatus to be capable of producing sonically useful 'wonders', patience and perseverance is essential.  It is true that the apparatus is built from stuff pulled out dustbins - this is perhaps the part that the aforementioned critic took issue with.  This seems a contentious area (and it really shouldn't be).  To this day, passive-aggressive people still crow "should you be doing that?" and "go away" whilst I'm searching for acoustic parts in bins.

I'd be a great sound designer, researcher or archivist at the British Library's sound archive (for example), but frustratingly, employment has not been forthcoming.  I've ranted about this elsewhere...  Jobseeker's Allowance was cut off.  Poverty compelled me to rummage through bins, for food, entertainment, tools and raw materials for quasi-saleable crafted miscellany (including miraculous agitation assemblies).  It's scandalous to behold how much usefulness gets discarded.  The thaumatacoustic philosophy is ensconced in these experiences.

In the light of this seemingly beggarly state, it was invigorating to find on March 2nd that five messages had reached me through diverse channels.  The messages were all from one researcher for RDF Television / Zodiak Media, apparently involved in making a TV documentary for Channel 4:

Hi there,
I was wondering if you might be able to help me. I work for a TV production company called RDF Television and we are currently working on a new show for Channel 4 – which looks into all the weird and wonderful things you can get for free.

I have come across a sound artist called Dan Wilson who creates musical instruments out of unwanted goods and electrical parts he finds in skips and I read that he sometimes performs with Oscillatorial Binnage.

I would really like to have a chat with Dan but can’t find any contact details for him any where. I was wondering if you could let me know if there is any way of getting in touch with him or perhaps you could forward this email on to him so he can get in touch with me? Just want to have a chat with Dan about what he does.

You can contact me here or my email address is ----  or my direct number is -----.

Hope to hear from you,
---

These TV researchers often cast their net widely, and I did suspect that they might find me too weird a fish for their fishtank.  I described my practices and provided links to various examples, but also lamented that I couldn't produce more expository audio examples due to lack of equipment (more high quality microphones would be a Godsend).

The correspondent elaborated on their remit:

I’m not sure how much I explained about the show.  We’re making a consumer programme for channel 4, that looks into all the things you can get for free – weird and wonderful things that you might not think of.

I really liked the idea that you make instruments from electrical  items you find in skips and that is what I was interested in talking to you about. We’re looking for people who are experts in their field who would like to talk on camera about their experiences – for example the pitfalls of skip diving / the best places to go for the best finds – so we’re looking for a spokesperson who can tell us about the ‘art’ of skip diving. It’s not so much about the music itself, I’m afraid.

I’m not sure if this is something you would be interested in at all?

Yes - it sounded worthwhile and useful exposure.  But then came the bitter irony.  Any payment?  "There is no payment, I’m afraid, as we don’t have the budget."   So, a programme about the "weird and wonderful things you can get for free" is trying to source the raw materials for free!

This reminded me of a certain King's Cross publisher who, some years ago, sought to find homeless 'renegade gardeners' to write for them about their personal experiences of homeless gardening.  There was no payment for this work, yet the book would retail for +£15 per copy.

I gently berated the RDF correspondent: "Not wishing to sound exhortational - it seems a bit skew-whiff to make a programme about bin-diving - a last resort for the poorest and most vulnerable in society - and not pay the interviewees!"

The reply was defensive and ambiguous: "It is a factual documentary to show the general public that there are benefits to be had in this time of financial crisis. And in no way will we be showing ways in which to take from people who really need it."  ('Benefits to be had in this time of financial crisis'?!?)  One media behemoth I once dealt with some years ago had its minions bandying about the term "loser generated content" with some enthusiasm, and I've been wary of these sapping dilettantes ever since.

Nevertheless, I agreed to provide some insight for this programme, but suddenly the doors had closed tightly:  the reply read "I’m afraid the format of the show has slightly changed in the past couple of weeks. When I last spoke to you we were still in the early research stages and seeing what stories were out there, but now we have fully cast all our contributors and experts."

Disappointments far outnumber wonders when searching for miraculous agitations.  I sighed, and an apparatus set on a cardboard box sympathetically buzzed in an interesting manner.

In Search of Miraculous Agitations

Now I must explain the title of this blog - 'Miraculous Agitations'.  Miraculous agitations are complex sounds which fortuitously occur every now and then in the oddments of acoustic furniture surrounding us.  Any agitational forces such as draughts of air, hums of electromechanical appliances, etc., allow for vibrational interactions between clustered objects.  When combinations of different agitational forces are acting simultaneously upon clustered objects, fascinating flourishes may be heard.

This month's Brooklyn Rail features a article I wrote on this topic - 'Miraculous Agitation: Scroungings Toward a New Acoustic Synthesis' - which should help explain things. [The live performance mentioned in the article may be heard here].

The occurrence of fascinating sonic flourishes (the miraculous agitations) in our acoustic environment suggests the possibility of building a mechanical synthesiser to acoustically reproduce the miraculous agitations.  Pulleys, jacks, clamps, levers and cranks control the resonances and couplings between vibrating physical elements.

A lot of time and thought has gone into the construction of these apparatuses - many of which use electromagnetic feedback: a multitude of ferric objects 'bowed' electromagnetically.  What is immediately clear is that physical vibration exploits any weak points in an assembly.  Untightened bolts will unscrew, parts will migrate, mechanical hysteresis alters the resonant properties of anything remotely flimsy, and objects placed atop vibrating surfaces will be shunted in a hot potato effect.  Subharmonic undertones are produced, along with many failed subharmonics (unfulfilled bounces).  The picture above shows a resonated pitchfork overarched by subharmonic selector prongs.  Possibilities begin to present themselves when resonant objects are allowed to periodically collide: a physical kind of granular synthesis is effected.  On top of this, entrainments occur between feedback systems.  When sympathetic resonance is also taken into account, the sonic potential of mechanically moderated apparatuses is evident.

Scrounging an apparatus for miraculousness

There is a problem with this.  If it is possible to reproduce a miraculous agitation willy-nilly, it will lose its miraculousness.  However, quirks of acoustic interaction operate on knife-edges beyond our immediate perception.  Also, it is not practical to 'box up' vibrating elements into an enclosed 'synthesiser' construct - everything must be readily accessible.  Even with all axes of control at our disposal, miraculous agitations certainly remain elusive.  I have had to scale down the control mechanisms to near-microscopic ranges.  Magnifying glasses are used to moderate grazing collisions.  These acts of timbre-seeking serve to create fertile ground for chance flourishes to occur.  Even with magnifying instrumental aids, the apparatus is never fully under control owing to the bewildering array of variables even in a primitive few stacked objects.

Futility: Examining grazings between vibrating objects

In the Charles Dickens book 'David Copperfield', there is a character named Wilkins Micawber, a debtor who is known for his hopeful motto that 'something will turn up sooner or later'.  This attitude is often referred to as Micawberism.  It is by applying Micawberism to music that the miraculous agitations may be patiently anticipated.  It may not be known what expressive form or character they will take, but if one waits long enough at a vibrating assembly, something miraculous will indeed turn up.

Just as the assembly is played through experimentally scrounging for these interesting moments, the apparatus is similarly constructed from amalgamating scrounged materials picked from the trade waste bins of small businesses, charity shops, factories, etc.  "Soiled knick-knacks" are sought (see local newspaper report in the previous posting).  This dispenses with commercial hardware fetishism, and relegates the 'composer' to compositor, working in the service of the apparatus, rather than vice versa.  All pretensions are placed on the back-burner during such services.

I had tried to shoehorn the study of miraculous agitations into my university studies in 2005, but was dissuaded at the time due to my lack of articulateness on the matter.  In time, poverty taught me the correct lingo.  Continued dustbin investigations have led to the crystallisation of 'dream mechanics'.   'Dream mechanics' may sound like a troupe of male strippers, but it actually refers to idealised mechanisms suggested by conjunction of concepts.  This blog was originally intended to present these mechanics sequentially, but this would appear to be too esoteric to contemplate.  I will, however, elaborate on various mechanisms and miraculous agitation techniques in later postings…

Available here, on the 'Post Electronic Sound Harvesting Initiative' Soundcloud page, is a rare live attempt to produce miraculous agitations in 2009 at the Gasworks Gallery.  It failed somewhat, but miracles can't be summoned at will in such a relatively short space of time, and apparatus is not easily transportable.  Some electronic blasts are also fed into the agitators in the hope the feedback strands may be periodically unsettled to produce changes in vibratory states (to avoid the boredom with comes with waiting).  There are still some moments of timbre-seeking approaching miraculousness.

Pages from the scrapbook of dream mechanics detailing waveshapers to generate object-couplings, subharmonic grazings and non-linear chatter